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Hello, everybody. I've been working on a set of house rules to fix the major bugs in this great game. It is intended to be simple by altering as little as possible the components of the game and its spirit.
I have tried the whole campaign with my group of friends and feelings have been very positive.
Here are the download links to pdf (my mother tongue is Spanish, I hope the English version can be understood well):
In English
In Spanish
I hope you like it, and I look forward to hearing your opinions.
...Also in Boardgamegeek.

Hey all,
Over the past few months I've been updating and maintaining a houserule set on BGG that includes various extended rules, and I wanted to get the community's thoughts on something I added recently. I've added a section for something I'm calling Scenarios, which are basically meant to be in the spirit of actual encounters in the video game (pre-defined layout with special conditions/triggers, pre-defined loot, themes specific to the encounter, etc.) The one that I've posted so far is inspired by the Undead Parish and lead up to the Bell Gargoyles fight. I basically wanted to ask two things:
Is thing something people would be interested in me continuing to do? Would you actually use and play with these Scenarios?
I'd love any feedback you have on the Scenario itself. It's somewhat of a departure from the core game in a few ways, and think it would be great to get thoughts on what you think is good about it versus what doesn't work.
You can find it here: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/155076/extended-ruleset-pdf
Thanks!

Edit: I expanded on this concept a bit in a module I've called Precision Checks. Take a look if you feel so inclined: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/155076/extended-ruleset-pdf
Hey all,
I was thinking today about other ways to spice up combat. One of the things that lots of people have mentioned as something they wish was an option is parrying. This is a huge part of the Dark Souls video game, so I was curious if there's a good way to simulate that in the board game. The most obvious way has something to do with dice rolls, but I think people tend to dislike rolling dice for things that rely on skill in the video game.
The thing that popped into my mind though is that there is a thing in the board game that more or less relies completely on skill: recalling boss behavior cards. It got me thinking about ways I could leverage that challenge to make a satisfying parry mechanic that has a few vital features:
Relies on very little chance.
Allows players to get better as they play the game more.
Increases risk.
What I came up with is detailed below; curious to see what people think.
--------- Parry/Riposte
Before the game, randomly choose a boss behavior deck that is not currently being used. Shuffle all behavior cards together and draw 7.
One at a time, discard each card as though the boss was performing each attack. Then, without shuffling, flip the deck over and set it aside. It is considered the Parry deck.
When an enemy attacks, you may choose to attempt to parry and riposte the attack at a cost of 1 Stamina. If you do, roll one die of each color. Draw cards from the Parry deck equal to the swords shown on the dice, flipping the deck over before drawing if there are no cards left to draw. Then, the parrying player must guess the following attributes of the next behavior card, ignoring Repeat icons, in the order that they appear:
Total printed damage done by the behavior. If the damage is part of a push that also includes movement, the damage and movement for that icon can be declared in any order.
Total amount of printed movement shown on the behavior card. If the boss Leaps, it is considered infinite movement.
The Dodge difficulty of the attack indicates the number of consecutive cards the parrying player must guess correctly to successfully parry/riposte.
If the player was incorrect about any value, the parry was considered a failure. Otherwise, it is considered a success.
If the parry failed, the parrying player takes all damage from the attack.
If the parry succeeded, the parrying player takes no damage, and may make an attack against the attacking enemy if it is in range and the player is able to pay the Stamina cost. They then shuffle the deck and one at a time, discard each card as though the boss was performing each attack. Then, without shuffling, flip the deck over and set it aside. Example: A player is attacked by an attack with a dodge difficulty of 2. They spend 1 Stamina to parry. The Parry deck is a Titanite Demon deck. They roll each color dice and the total shows 5 swords. They draw 5 cards and then guess the next card. They guess 6 damage, 0 movement. They then flip the next card, which shows Vaulting Slam. That behaviour card has an icon that shows Leap with a push damage of 6, followed by a movement icon with a 0 value. This is correct, so they guess again. They guess 1 movement, 5 damage. They flip the next card, and it is Lightning Bolt. It has an icon that shows a movement of 1, followed by a 5 damage attack. This is correct. The player takes no damage. They are also within range of the attacking enemy, so they make an attack that costs 2 Stamina. After this, they shuffle the Parry deck together, discard each card one at a time to view the new order, and then flips the discarded deck over.

EDIT:
I ended up reworking these into a proper PDF from an amazing template that @cabezazo shared with me which can be found here. Many thanks to him for that and some really valuable clarification feedback! A few updates are there too for clarification, but the big thing is the text looks a lot more crisp and prints out looking a lot better. Sorry they're not here, but the PDF is too large to host on SFG forums. Further updates will be made on the PDF in the BGG link above rather than here.
Thanks again for looking at these everyone, and if there's anything that can be done to make these rules clearer, don't hesitate to let me know.
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Hey everyone,
The last few weeks I've been posting some custom rulesets that I've been playing with lately and floated the idea of including them all in nicely formatted rulesheets. I decided to take a bit of time to get them all in there, so just wanted to post them here so everyone can enjoy them. Let me know what you think, and feedback is of course welcome

Hi all,
I've been thinking of ways to balance some of the issues in this game. Mainly, the punishing randomness of the treasure deck and the overtly long play length of a typical game.
I've not decided on what my favourite variant is for reducing the game length, but I'm told that the half sparks double souls variant works reasonably well.
With regards to fixing the treasure deck balance, it's always felt difficult to capture the balance of having some challenge in optimising your build to deal with randomness as opposed to not leaving the players open to very poor treasure pulls as a result of bad luck. The amount of games I've played where I've pulled 4 armour sets in a row, or found all of the upgrade items somehow bundled at the bottom of the deck are too many to mention!
What do people think of this idea as a potential fix?
I wanted to introduce a new character to the bonfire room. The Shrine Handmaiden.
My idea is that Andre will still provide treasure flips for one soul as is done in the core rules. I felt this was necessary to keep as it emulates randomly finding items in the field but with some balance. The handmaiden on the other hand will provide a set menu of items that will be expanded throughout the game.
For example:
You could either pay 1 soul to randomly flip treasure or buy the following from the Handmaiden's initial shop:
titanite shard 4 souls
short sword 6 souls
workers armour 3 souls
(just pulling these figures as example, but basically items will be assigned a cost based on their value. This is how the balance is kept. If you purchase an item, you search the deck for it and add it to the inventory and then reshuffle the deck).
If you've played Dark Souls 3, you'll know about the ashes items that expand the Handmaidens store in the game. I wanted to perhaps emulate the same feature in the board game.
The idea being that as you explore, you will uncover random ashes that make a small selection of items available at costs based on their value. These items will also be grouped together strategically to try and keep as much balance as possible. These ashes cards will be printed on custom cards that show the entire shop expansion menu to make life easier. I don't know by what mechanic these ashes will be found yet, either through exploration with random dice rolls for discovery, or in chests etc.
What do people think of this as a potential idea? It would take some work to develop, but could be a good solution to the randomness of the core game.

Hey guys,
Over the past few weeks I've been creating a few variants for people to play with that I'd like to eventually incorporate in a compendium of house rules. I wanted to post something else I've been working on to get people's thoughts on. One of the things people have been talking about disliking is the degree to which there's not much exploration in the game. To mitigate that, I thought it would be cool to have different effects based on what location you're in.
Let me know what you all think
Ruined Keep - Each time a player or enemy makes an attack with range greater than 0, roll a dodge die. On failure, that attack's value is decreased by one. The Forgotten - When destroying a barrel, roll a dodge die. On success, draw a treasure. On failure, spawn a Crossbow Hollow on the destroyed barrel space. Dark Hollow - Each time an enemy ends an activation without dealing damage to a player, remove one damage from that enemy. Unlighted Chamber - Attacks have a maximum range of 2. When a model moves to a node, roll a dodge die. Upon failure, you must choose a different node for that model to move to. Broken Passageway - Any time two or more models are on the same space, roll a dodge die for each model. Upon failure, that model takes damage equal to a blue die roll. Shattered Dungeon - If both barrels are destroyed, draw a treasure. Ashen Hollow - If a player kills two enemies on the same activation, gain two souls. Ghostly Keep - If a player does not kill an enemy on their activation, spawn a Hollow Soldier on the single sword space. Gain a soul for each new enemy spawned. Forsaken Depths - Enemies' melee attacks have Bleed. Ash Gardens - When destroying a barrel, search the treasure deck for Firebombs. Place it in your inventory and shuffle the treasure deck. The Deeps - When a player moves to a node, roll a dodge die. On a failure, that player is poisoned. Spend one stamina while adjacent to the tombstone to remove poison. Hollow Cave - If there are no models on an enemy spawn node at the end of an activation, spawn a Hollow Soldier there. Gain a soul for each new enemy spawned. Demon Ruins - Players with Tier 1 or greater Faith deal +1 damage on all attacks. All other players deal -1 damage on all attacks. Weathered Peak - All attacks have frostbite. Sunrise Pass - At the beginning of each model's activation, it heals one wound. Lightless Passage - When a player fails a dodge roll, they take an additional damage. Black Dungeon - Players cannot heal wounds. Magic attacks deal one additional damage. Temple of the Deeps - When adjacent to the tombstone at the end of a player's activation, you may roll a dodge die. On success, add a random transposed treasure from the current boss to your inventory. On failure, remove the location and replace it with Desecrated Church, setting up that encounter as normal with player models unmoved and player boards unaltered. Sentinel's Wrath - While adjacent to the tombstone, you may pay 2 stamina to draw from the treasure deck until you reach a spell. Activate that spell's least powerful ability for free, and then shuffle the spell back into the treasure deck. Forgotten Gorge - Any time an enemy is on an outermost node and is pushed, that enemy dies. If a player is on an outermost node and fails a dodge roll, they die. Prison Tower - Once during this encounter, a player may end their turn on an empty violet node to free a prisoner. That player may search through the treasure deck for an Ember, place it in their inventory, and then shuffle the treasure deck. Burned Gardens - Players may attack the barrel. If they do, destroy the barrel and all adjacent models take one blue die of magic damage. Lost Labyrinth - Any time a model is on a node adjacent to a wall, they are considered to be adjacent to nodes located adjacent to the opposite wall(s). High Wall of Lothric - Any time a player moves from an outermost node to a non-outermost node due to a dodge, they take one damage. Attacks by models on outermost nodes gain +1 damage provided the attack is against a model in a non-outermost node. Central Irithyll - Each player enters this encounter with a Frostbite token. Silent Tombs - Enemies do not activate on their turn. Each time a player moves to a node or completes an attack, they roll dodge dice equal to their dexterity tier (minimum of 1 die). If the result of the roll does not meet or exceed the dodge value of an enemy's attack, that enemy activates immediately. Desecrated Church - When adjacent to the tombstone at the end of a player's activation, you may roll a dodge die. On success, remove the location and replace it with Temple of the Deeps, setting up that encounter as normal with player models unmoved and player boards unaltered. On failure, reset this encounter with player models unmoved and player boards unaltered. All enemies' health values are doubled. Wretched Gardens - When destroying a barrel, search the treasure deck for Kukris. Place it in your inventory and shuffle the treasure deck. Empty Crypt - When gaining treasure upon completing this encounter, you may instead draw cards from the treasure deck until you find a gem. Place that gem into your inventory and shuffle the treasure deck. Lost Shrine - When gaining treasure upon completing this encounter, you may instead remove an equipped spell from the game to draw cards from the treasure deck until you find a spell. Place that spell into your inventory and shuffle the treasure deck. Dilapidated Bridge - Models may not move onto outermost nodes that are only adjacent to one wall. Untended Graves - Upon completing this encounter, players may spend one spark to decrease all their skill attributes to Base level and gain the number of souls equal to the cost of their total skill investment to this point. Profane Shrine - Players with Tier 1 or greater Faith start with one wound. Players with Tier 1 or greater Intelligence gain 3 stamina at the start of their activation instead of 2. Cemetary of Ash - Each time an enemy dies, place a Poison token where their model was. Models that pass over this token gain it. Pit of the Dead - Each time an enemy dies, place a damage marker where their model was. Models cannot enter this node. Perished Depths - Models deal +N damage on attacks, where N is the total number of sparks used by the party since the beginning of the game.

Hey all,
I thought up another cool play variant that I'm curious how people feel about. I've been thinking a lot about game difficulty and thought it would be cool to try a version of the game where you don't worry so much about the AI difficulty, but rather difficulty against other players. Think DSBG as something similar to a MOBA (Dota2, Smite, LoL, etc.).
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Coliseum Objective: The game ends when the boss is dead. The player with the most souls at that point wins. Map placement/encounters:
The fog door to the boss is placed adjacent to the bonfire.
When an encounter is defeated, each player chooses whether to begin participating in combat in the next encounter or return to the bonfire. This resolves simultaneously (see Turns below).
When all encounters have been defeated, draw new encounter cards and return all players to the bonfire (or the first room if a player chooses to begin participating in combat).
If players open a treasure chest as part of an encounter, the treasure goes immediately to the inventory (players do not get a chance to equip until they return to the bonfire).
Players do not heal health or stamina when passing between encounters.
Turns:
Players all act simultaneously. They may take their turns in order for simplicity and clarity, but turns resolve simultaneously.
Turns alternate as such
Players’ turn (all players)
Enemies’ turn
The first aggro token goes to the player with the highest taunt value, then proceeds around the table in a clockwise fashion for the remainder of the game. If the player with the aggro token is not in an encounter during an enemy activation, enemies attack the next most appropriate player (typically by distance or taunt).
On the players’ turn, a player may participate in combat or return to the bonfire, but not both..
Returning to the Bonfire
When players return to the bonfire, players may take one of the following actions:
Upkeep
Recover health/stamina.
Buy treasure and/or equip gear: If multiple players rest at the bonfire and wish to buy treasure, the player with the least souls gets first priority to buy one treasure and/or equip gear from the inventory. Priority then proceeds in a clockwise fashion, with each player able to buy one piece of treasure and/or equip gear before passing priority to the player on their left. This continues until all players are done buying treasure and equipping gear.
Upgrade stats.
Refresh
Refresh all tokens on the player display, akin to using a Spark in the core ruleset. This does not include health/stamina.
Once this process is finished, players may remain in the Bonfire tile to take another Bonfire action on their next turn, or return to the encounter on a valid entry node.
Deaths:
Sparks are infinite.
The death of a player results in each opposing player gaining 4 souls. On their next turn, they must return to the Bonfire and take the Upkeep action.
Soul rewards:
Souls are not shared between players.
Souls are not accumulated upon beating encounters. Players rather gain one soul per damage done to an enemy. Players do not gain extra souls for doing damage beyond an amount that would kill an enemy.
If players simultaneously target the same enemy, they both receive souls for doing damage (up to the amount of health remaining on the enemy) and the enemy takes the greatest number of damage dealt by a player this turn. For example, if a Large Hollow Soldier has 2 health remaining, Player 1 does two attacks that deal a total of 4 damage, and Player 2 does an attack that deals deals 3 damage, they receive 2 and 2 souls respectively and the Large Hollow Soldier is dead. If the Large Hollow Soldier has 5 health remaining, they receive 4 and 3 souls respectively and the Large Hollow Soldier has 1 health left.
Node model limit:
Nodes may temporarily have more than 3 models provided there are not more than two enemies on the node, and it is the players’ turn. This is to resolve multiple players attacking the same model. As soon as the players’ turn is over, all players must return from the node that is over the limit to the node they came from.
Friendly buffs:
If a player’s item or ability would cause a positive effect to other players, they may choose to not apply that effect to other players.
Team variant
All rules are the same, but teams share souls.
-----
If some of these variants I've been coming up with end up being popular with people, I'd kind of like to make a little compendium of play variations that look like real rulesheets, so I'm sort of testing the waters to see what kind of stuff people like and don't like. A few other things I've been mulling over is things like various stat abilities that get chosen before game setup, ways of immediately facing bosses/mega-bosses, and location-specific tile effects (for example, maybe movement effects if you're in the High Wall of Lothric that simulate there being an actual wall there). I think DSBG can be a game that all gamers are eager to bring to the table, so I've been having fun trying to facilitate that with my group and others'

Hey all,
So, my group and I play with a variant where we use the empty spaces to the left of the attribute tracks to track abilities for those attributes. Thought it might be a neat idea to try out a variant where players can get different abilities to work toward that change from game to game. Going to try some of these out this week (haven't had much of a chance to playtest), but curious what others think too.
Abilities
Spaces to the left of players' stat progression tracks represent ability bars. Each space on the track represents a once-per-spark action the player may take on the their turn. When an ability is used, place a cube in a space on the track. Each ability may only be used once on the player's turn.
At the beginning of the game, each player rolls four six-sided dice. They then place each die adjacent to a stat progression track. The value shown dictates which ability is relevant for that stat:
Strength
Great Endurance - When you would spend stamina, decrease that cost by one.
Staggering Blow - When blocking or attacking a model, push that model one space.
Immovable Object - When you would be forced to move this turn, you may choose to not move.
Massive Strike - Add one to a two-handed weapon attack roll.
Strong Arm - Use an attack from a two-handed weapon in your backup slot instead of an equipped one-handed weapon.
Fortified Armor - Add one to a block roll when wearing armor that has no dodge value.
Dexterity
Elegant Swordsman - During an attack or block, add one black die.
Skilled Acrobat - Add a dodge die to a dodge roll.
Critical Strike - Add one to a one-handed weapon attack roll.
Hidden Sidearm - Use an attack from a one-handed weapon in your backup slot instead of an equipped one-handed or two-handed weapon.
Falling Somersault - When you would be forced to move this turn, you may choose to move an extra space.
Fleet-footed - After taking a move action, move up to two extra spaces at no stamina cost.
Intelligence
Arcane Engineering - During an attack or block, add/remove the magic attribute to/from that attack or block.
Advanced Study - Use an ability for a different attribute of your choice.
Exceptional Recall - Provided a boss's behavior deck has been exhausted at least once, look at the top card of its behavior deck.
Alternate Path - After viewing an encounter card, draw another encounter card to replace it.
Potent Sorcery - Add one to a magic attack roll. If using this ability for Faith, roll for a different ability.
Magic Attenuation - Add one to a block roll when wearing armor that has a magic resist die.
Faith
Radiant Light - Roll a black die and heal up to that many points of damage from the party, divided however you choose.
Heavenly Assistance - When removing stamina or damage cubes from players in the party as a result of an action you take, roll a blue die. Remove that many extra from the party, divided however you choose.
Grand Fortune - Look at the top two cards of the treasure deck. Place each on the top or bottom of the treasure deck.
Good Samaritan - Exhaust your luck token, estus flask, or player ability token. Refresh the same token for another player. Roll for a different ability if playing solo.
Potent Sorcery - Add one to a magic attack roll. If using this ability for Intelligence, roll for a different ability.
Frantic Prayer - Use a spell action in your backup slot instead of an equipped weapon.

After finally getting to introduce some new players to the game, the general reaction on reading the bonfire spark rules was "Can we just skip to the boss?" Many reviews echo the sentiment that the boss fights are the best parts of the game, while fighting the same few basic enemies in the same patterns is boring. So why not fix it by combining the best variant ideas?
Boss Rush Rules:
• Lay out only two encounter tiles between the bonfire and the boss tile: one level 1 encounter and one level 2.
• Start with half the number of bonfire sparks.
• After defeating an encounter, the party receives 8 souls per player.
• After defeating the mini boss, the party receives 4 souls per player per remaining spark. Flip the tiles over and deal out one level 2 encounter and one level 3.
• After dying or resting at the bonfire, deal out new encounters of the same level on each tile. Any chests start opened.
• You may not purchase Luck at the bonfire.
• After the Dancer of the Boreal Valley heats up, her physical defense increases to 3.